Distractions

Annamaria on Monday

All we MIE bloggers, from time to time, run into situations when the available time is consumed with what we might call "real life. This is one of those times for me.  Distractions have consumed the time I would otherwise have devoted to sharing thoughts of a some more or less amusing or informative nature.  One of those distractions was completely wonderful.

Miriam Anderson Hall

Kimmel Center

Philadelphia

Thanks to an invitation from fellow music lovers in Philadelphia, I had an opportunity to attend a concert performance of the Verdi Requiem.  It is a brilliant, enormously powerful piece of music that I have long enoyed in recordings, but that i had never heard in its entirety in a live performance. Conducted by Ricardo Muti, it was splendid.  So much so that it took me a couple of hours into the night for me to fall asleep.

Here is a taste of the music, not by the great Philadelphia Orchestra, but one available on YouTube, by the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra.

The other distraction was of a far less welcome nature.  It came to my attention the following morning, Sunday morning while listening to the news, that Mr. Trump would be holding a political rally at Madison Square Garden at 5PM.  Thing was, i was schedule to take a train home from Philly arriving at 7PM.  My train would be arriving into a the teeth of a maelstrom of ProTroump and Anti-Trump activists.  My friends and I altered our plans.  I would be robbed of a walk in the local arboretum with them and instead take an earlier train in the hopes of avoiding getting struck in the crowds.

As it turned out, as I exited Penn Station at 1:30 PM, 8th Avenue was at a complete halt, with bumper to bumper cars five abreast.  Every possible spot was chockablock with people and to the east, all ways were blocked  with barriers. The police lieutenant guarding one told me that the Secret Service had closed off the movement in that direction.

It's good to know the ropes.  I found my way around it all and arrived at home in time throw this report together.  A big regret is that I did not take more pictures. But readers, I am sure, know what a traffic jam looks like.

I really wish I had conservedf more energy to make this post more lively.

It's Political Cartoon Peak Season

 

Jeff-Saturday

 

With the US Presidential Election ten days away, feelings in the US (and around the world) are running high. Thankfully, this time around we’ve only had to put up with three months of head-to-head madness---though it seems a lot longer.

 

Frankly, I’m about done with it all (especially the incessant pitch by all parties for $$$$$$), so I turned to political cartoonists for a bit of lighter insight on where and how they see the election going.

 

Considering the times, I’m not surprised there’s an awful lot of decidedly partisan stuff out there, but I decided not to head in that direction. Instead, I went looking for bigger picture approaches and found common ground on some basic principles.  But before I turn to those examples, I thought I’d give you a taste of the partisan sort of cartoons our there…and believe me when I say these two are among the mildest.

 

To those two I’ve added a third cartoon, not because I see it as partisan, but because there nothing about the subject it critiques which strikes me as justifiable in free elections. 

 

Having said that, let’s move on to a plethora of jibes taken at the rarest of all voters still out there.

 

And for those who suffer from undecided extremis, these next two cartoons are for you.

 

For those who enjoy the rough and tough world of political haggling over competing beliefs, have no fear. Just keep in mind this cartoon’s message.

 

And for those who see election day as a welcome end to neighbor-against-neighbor bickering and belittling, I offer you this cartoon.

 

But no matter how things turn out, make sure you turn out to VOTE.

 

––Jeff

Putting a foot on the handbrake

I was at an event yesterday that involved a very cold ferry, some very nice pasta, a bottle of 19  Crimes wine and a very nice bookshop.

And cake.

Him indoors decorating a cake in the digital age.

The usual suspects were involved - me, Michael Malone and Douglas Skelton. Dina, who runs the bookshop, was getting a train to Paris that night on her way to holiday in the south of Spain. The most difficult part of the journey was getting the ferry back to the mainland. Well, not really the mainland, cause it's not an island. But it is a very long drive round.

I use the term 'long' in a Scottish way, bearing in mind that last week we were calling a 35mph wind a 'hurricane'. Although other weather types are available we do only excel at rain.

Scottish yearly forecast

 

During the chat Douglas used the phrase  'the handbrake moment', which is when something happens in the book which is neither plausible nor probable. I presume it’s the same point that I throw the book across the room. It’s a more extreme reaction than the phrase 'that pulls you out of the narrative' when you hear the author’s voice intruding.

So on the ferry home we were talking about the handbrake moments. Typical themes were police officers doing very silly things like getting out of bed in the middle of the night because they hear a noise in the graveyard and they ignore their baton (in the UK), their gun (other territories), the rottweiller sleeping in the corner, the mobile phone and head out unarmed into the graveyard wearing only their pants (British pants). If you have to do that to make your plot work, you should have thought about it a bit harder.

This cover is here because of something relevant to the blog- something I had to made fit to avoid a handbrake moment. It's so beautifully, seamlessly woven into the plot that I can't recall what it was.

A few others that came up were, this happening more in film than in books – the pursued running in front of the chasing car. Why do they not just jump to the side? In the TV series The Tourist with Jamie Dornan, he was running along a single track road being pursued by a car.

A dry stane dyke.

 There were dry stain dykes on either side of the road. All he had to do was jump over. And if the car tried to follow him it would come to a sorry end. Dry stain dykes can stand up to Highland Cattle being annoyed. So a Toyota Rav4 would have been pulverized. 

Others are big CGI war scenes that go on and on to increase the running time of the production and the junk morality contained therein. The other half wants me to write in here  ‘with great power comes great responsibility’ and use the word proselytize in a proper sentence.

Signing and more signing

My personal pet hatred in a film is when somebody goes to walk out the room and with their hand on the handle they turn round, they make a face as if they’ve just found a wasp in their rum and raisin ice cream and say,  'thanks'. 

There’s also splitting up to search the haunted house, never a good idea. And, running out of bullets at exactly the wrong moment. Or, indeed not using bullets when you’ve got them. If they had just shot James Bond rather than trying to feed him to the sharks, dangle him over a volcano etc the franchise would have been over very quickly.

Talking about this blog to a patient, they said that they had been reading a book by a very well known author, where a man staggers about on a broken leg for three chapters or more. This patient actually had the exact same fracture and he couldn’t stagger from the snow on to the stretcher which was six inches away.

I'm looking at self help books. Don't know what the other two are doing...

I think one of my pet hates is when the author gives a well known character a talent that they’ve never mentioned before but they have it now because the plot needs it. In the Anderson and Costello books Mulholland has a Russian mother, so he speaks fluent Russian. You know that about him in book 1, and it comes in handy in books 4 and 5. But as it’s a well established fact it comes as no surprise. The ability to lip read fluently? The ability to speak New Testament Greek? It's all just a bit suspect if its only there to make the plot work.

Me and knife... what could go wrong?

At the event somebody said 'There's two Glaswegians in here, that's enough for a fight.'

I remember flinging the book across the room when a certain well known crime fighter came across a body trapped underwater. So, they just went to the boot (Trunk??) of their car, opened it  and lo and behold their SCUBA equipment was right there. And that’s another one that comes to mind, the ability to fly a helicopter. The amount of time a man goes running towards a helicopter, jumps in and away he goes, is ridiculous.

Skippy  diffusing a bomb with her paws is more believable.

Skippy was wise.

I think I remember a reader of this blog saying that a screen full of computer code while someone types furiously was his particular bug bear.  

Occasionally,  there’s the opposite effect. When you mention something that happens a lot and you put it in a novel because it's second nature to you. The ferry we were on last night goes from A to B. Our driver was saying that most people try and take the ferry. It's not the length of the drive round that’s the problem, it’s the fact you have to go along a road called the Rest and Be Thankful. It's closed again for the fourth time this year due to yet another landslide. The military road at the bottom of the glen has never been closed for any reason because cattle drovers knew the safe way through the hills. At the moment the military road is being used, but the traffic is going through by convoy and the wait can be a very long time indeed. The latest idea, as the cages haven't  worked, is to build something like an avalanche roof over the road so the landslides go over the top--- and will probably then block the military road as well.

Michael wondering why he gets himself involved in these events.

I used this convoy scenario on that road at the start of book 5, somebody being held at the red light on that spooky road in the small hours of the morning due to yet another landslide. Big red pen from my editor down the side 'Yes, but how often does this actually happen!' It's more a case of when is the road actually open!

What’s your particular handbrake moment? 

 

Cold cases

 Michael - Alternate Thursdays

Why are cold cases so fascinating? Look at the popularity of all the fact-based TV series complete with interviews with the actual investigators and witnesses. One obvious reason is that because the cases take so long to solve, they tend to be twisty and surprising. Otherwise they wouldn’t be cold cases in the first place. Maybe the fact that the detectives are initially baffled and only new evidence or new technology allows them to make a breakthrough adds to the interest. Whatever the reasons, cold cases grab attention. And there are plenty of them in plenty of varieties. For a selection take a look at Wikipedia.

Mystery Fanfare's take on cold cases...

It’s conventional wisdom that a case that’s going to be solved at all is usually solved in two days. Actually, investigators say that more accurately a person of interest is identified in that time period, and a couple of weeks is all that’s required to gather enough evidence so that the person can be arrested. (Generally, Forensics needs longer than a few days to process all the evidence, and DNA may take longer still.) A Washington Post examination of 8,000 homicide arrests across 25 major U.S. cities since 2007 found that in half of the cases an arrest was made in ten days or less.

Still, in a murder case, the police would expect the case to stay “warm” for about a year before it gets relegated to the cold-case division. That would be another group of detectives (maybe just one) who will go over the casefile again in detail and try to see the evidence from a different perspective and throw a wider net to pick up suspects. Unsolved murder cases never close, but their probability of being solved rapidly decreases. Given the amount of effort that has already been put into the case while it's "warm", it’s rather surprising that around 30% of cold cases are actually solved in a year. However, the number of cold cases keeps growing.

 

The driving force behind solving cold cases may well be a new technology rather than a new pair of eyes. The common use of DNA testing was a huge boon and became standard at crime scenes around 2000, making the early 2000s the heyday of cold-case units. There was a huge amount of stored evidence, some of which could be DNA tested leading to connections with existing suspects or introducing new ones. However, of course, the DNA requires something to match to. If the murderer had left a DNA signature (more likely in those days before killers regarded CSI as required viewing for Murder101), then it didn’t help unless Forensics had a matching sample from an identified person. In fact, DNA was often more helpful in eliminating suspects than it was in identifying new ones. DNA analysis was (and still is) a huge boon for exonerating innocent people.

Joseph DeAngelo, the Golden State Killer
This charming old gentlemen murdered and raped at least 65 people

More recently the internet and people’s love of using it has offered a rather different sort of database – a sort of “volunteer” DNA databank. One of these is GEDmatch. Started by one man to help people find lost family members and ancestors, it allows you to upload your DNA markers, and then you can search it for various types of matches. It can identify quite distant or close relatives. So one can find a lost third cousin or perhaps fill gaps in a family tree. In the wide open world of social media, there’s no downside. But there is one of course. Other people can also search and discover you as a relation. Even the police can search by uploading the DNA of an unknown suspect. Zoe Sharp explained how it was used to catch the Golden State Killer in 2018 in one of her blogs.

At the time the owner of GEDmatch was furious that his site had been used in that way, fearing he’d lose many of his clients because of the feeling that they were being analyzed in some way by the police. Big Brother is watching your DNA. However, he was wrong. The reaction of his clients was overwhelmingly positive. Now you can opt out of being visible to law enforcement agencies, but most people don’t seem to mind. Perhaps discovering that your cousin is a murderer is not only worth a viral Facebook post, but may be a useful safety feature! Then again, perhaps people just like the idea of helping the police.

The AI detective
Yes, it does exist. No, it doesn't look like this.

So where will the next cold case breakthrough technology come from? The AI detective? I wrote a science fiction short story along those lines fifty years ago, maybe I should dust it off…

LOTUS FOR POTUS: Election Canvassing in Pennsylvania

Sujata Massey

 The air was warm, and the sky so blue. Tall trees showed off crowns of red, orange and gold leaves as I cruised along Interstate 95 last Sunday morning.

Despite it being prime leaf-peeping time, I wasn't taking a scenic route for idle pleasure. Pennsylvania is a swing state in the coming national election; some say it's the state that Vice President Kamala Harris must win in order for the electoral college to line up in her favor. I’d heard about a massive canvassing day in Montgomery County, an area north of Philadelphia with slightly more Democrats than conservatives. My intention was to wind my way into North Wales, a town within the county, to deliver literature and perhaps a few words to possible voters.

 

The last time I canvassed was in Minnesota during the 2008 election on behalf of Barack Obama. During that long-ago fall, I carried a paper list and door-knocked in the tightly knit neighborhoods of Minneapolis, and the suburb of Eden Prairie, where the distance between houses was greater. I had chatted with Democrats and Republicans alike, because sixteen years ago, people were more relaxed about speaking with strangers. And we weren’t so polarized. Would canvassing work, in this day and age?  And now it was so much more complicated, involving data entry into a smartphone. 

 

The night before my drive, I’d received a text with instructions to add a voter canvassing app called Minivan. Now, It’s one thing to double-click an app onto your iPhone, but quite another to use that app skillfully. Minivan’s video tutorial showed how a map of houses would pop up when I was on the street, and how I’d be able to key in information such as whether I made contact, dropped literature, and any details the residents voluntarily shared about their voting plans. Minivan also had a built-in geographic tracker of where the phone was, something that made me feel a little more secure about the unknown encounters ahead. 

 

I reached the Montgomery Mall in North Wales in less than two hours, faster than Apple thought it would take. And walking into this vintage suburban mall, I realized I’d visited here twenty years earlier with friends to take our children to a Harry Potter movie. The suspenseful opening credits and thundering film score brought my daughter to tears, so we all fled the mall’s AMC theater and soothed the miserable at a candy stand, which was still there. I hoped this memory was not an omen that I'd once again back out of the mall without fulfilling a mission. 

 

Montgomery Mall seemed to have few visitors on a Sunday morning, just like many enclosed malls around the country today. The Harris-Walz campaign had rented a storefront for its purposes. This former shop was filled with volunteers, signs and totebags. I signed in and was off to sit at a table where a kindly man was giving a hands-on Minivan tutorial. Just what I needed. I also breathed easier when another volunteer appeared and said she’d be glad to partner with me while door-knocking. My partner was a lovely woman who had Minivan down cold without needing instruction. She also was a Perveen Mistry reader. What were the chances?

 

My partner and me 

Well, we both had connections to India. This particular rally and canvassing effort was organized by Indian American Impact, a national organization that raises money and gathers volunteers to support South Asian American candidates up and down the ballots. 

There are certainly conservative South Asian voters who support Trump, but the majority of South Asian voters lean Democratic. Kamala Harris has both Jamaican ancestry from her father, and Tamil ancestry from her late mother, who was born in India. The name Kamala is Sanskrit for lotus flower. I bought a catchy LOTUS FOR POTUS bumper sticker from Impact’s merch table, which also had wonderful tee-shirts with expressions like Desis Decide and Kamala Ke Saath (together for Kamala). How important is the South Asian vote in this campaign? Recent articles in The Washington Post  and New York Times focus on the nation's largest and most affluent immigrant population. Close to 400,000 South Asians who are eligible voters live in the swing states. 

 

After the buses carrying volunteers from Washington DC and New York City arrived, it looked like the crowd was pushing a few hundred. The people were of all ages—from children tagging along with their parents to well-dressed gentleman in their seventies. Volunteering also was not limited to South Asians; I saw Black and Caucasian and East Asian faces in the room. Yet the vibe at the gathering was distinctly Desi—the unifying nickname for South Asia that comes from the root word “Desh,” or homeland. Being a Desi means having roots on the Subcontinent, no matter how long ago your ancestors left.

Healthy snacks included samosas and chai

 

On Indian-American Impact’s  website, I found they were endorsing 48 candidates running for political office nationwide. These people were aspiring for jobs ranging from city council positions to judgeships and congress and senate. Impact does not expressly align itself with a political party, however it mentions that its core values include advocating for healthcare, climate and environmental safety, immigration, voting rights, and racial justice. They also don’t rubber stamp every politician who has South Asian ancestry. For example, Nikki Haley, a former Republican governor and a losing candidate in the Republican presidential primary, wasn’t on the list. 

 

Among the passionate speakers at our rally was Nina Ahmad, a Bangladeshi immigrant who is both the first Muslim and first Asian-American elected to the Philadelphia City Council. Nina reminded us to tell immigrant voters leaning Republican that while in office, Trump created a de-naturalization section within the Department of Justice that enabled government to strip Americans of citizenship. Recently, Trump has spoken of weaponizing the Justice Department and actively sending away legal immigrants, starting with Haitians, through a concept called Remigration. Imagine how this tactic could be employed at will against all green card holders and naturalized citizens!

Neil Makhija and Padma Lakshmi

 

Neil Makhija, a vibrant young man who was elected as the first Asian-American Montgomery County commissioner (there are three), also got us fired up with a discussion of local politics. Makheja had been sued three times already by the Pennsylvania Republican party for organizing a voter registration van and ensured voting information was printed in eight languages. “They sued me for making it possible for people to vote!” he said. His New York Times editorial about the importance of voting and the ironclad security around ballots is excellent.

 

Washington State Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal was on hand to push us into motivation, including the now-famous chant, “We’re Not Going Back.” We heard a moving song performed live by the Broadway composer/singer Ari Afsar, backed by a talented South Asian student acapella singing group from Penn State. Padma Lakshmi, who celebrates foods and diverse cultures on her Hulu series, “Taste the Nation,” explained why she supports Kamala Harris, and also why she thinks Donald Trump is so dangerous for the country. 

 

A volunteer meets Pramila Jayapal

Padma Lakshmi in action

Forty minutes after arrival, my new pal and I headed to her car, loaded with some election literature, and with our phones playing Minivan. 

 

The first two households were apartments on the back of a restaurant building. Nobody answered the door, so it was a rather anticlimactic feeling. Had we even reached the correct doors?  We continued on to a townhouse community. Here, on a street called Susan Circle, we had a list of 58 households. All close together, all well-numbered; excellent.

 

Going with a companion from door to door in the sunshine was quite a bit of fun. We saw great Halloween decorations, containers planted with fall chrysanthemums, and windows that were sometimes opened for conversation with us—or used as a way to see what we were up to. I understand that solicitors aren’t welcome on most doorsteps, including my own. Therefore, I felt very grateful for the people who were brave enough to open their doors and listen to our spiel:

 

“Hi, we’re here to check if you are planning to vote…that’s great, will it be early voting or on election day? Do you feel comfortable telling us who you’re planning to vote for? …That’s wonderful…And will you also support Senator Bob Casey?”

 

When we met people who said they hadn’t made up their minds, one of us might ask, “What issues are important to you in this election?” We’d both listen and reflect back to them what they had expressed. “That makes sense. Did you know…”  We were careful not to make speeches.

 

In this neighborhood, we chatted with many Asian Americans, many first or second generation immigrants. We had a conversation with a white woman who said she was grateful her boss made it clear to all his employees that they could take time on a workday to vote; she was voting for Kamala, and so were most of her co-workers. We also met a young white man who opened the door and held a whispered conversation with us because of conservative people nearby. He said he was voting for Kamala because of his girlfriend, and the importance of women’s rights over their bodies. I thanked him for it, just as many of the residents thanked us for volunteering. 

 

Those were very heartening moments. There were also some laughs. We couldn’t even begin to ask questions when an East Asian lady (probably in her eighties) opened her door, took one look at the two of us, and shouted: “No, no! I don’t want that. I’m voting Trump!” 

 

We had another humorous encounter when we rang the doorbell on a nearby house. Eventually  a second floor window was raised, and we saw the sliver of the face of a friendly boy who looked and sounded under age eleven. 

Boy: “I can’t open the door because my parents aren’t home.”

Us: “No problem, we understand. Is it OK if we leave a piece of information at your door?” 

Boy: “Go ahead.”

Sharp unknown adult voice: “No! Don’t leave anything!”

 

As we crisscrossed Susan Circle, Minivan cheered us on: “You’re 25% done!” until we completed our list. It turned out that we had made personal contacts with 26% of the households on the list, something to crow about because the Indian Impact volunteers told us that a10 percent rate of personal contact was typical. I suspect the sight of two women made people more curious than wary.  Although--as my partner pointed out--the Amazon delivery truck did roll through and help us get people to the doors during our last half hour of service. 

 

Would I canvas again? I am signed up for next weekend, canvassing for Angela Alsobrooks, the Democratic Senate hopeful in Maryland. A slow stroll for three hours seems a small effort to make in exchange for some memorable encounters. And if these meetings will encourage a few uncommitted people to think more about making a choice—and knowing the importance of voting—I’m very satisfied. 

Sujata will mail a free signed book to anyone in the US who door-knocks for Kamala Harris before November 5. Visit her website, sujatamassey.com,and email her with subject line Canvas for Kamala. In your email to me please include a selfie of you at the canvassing headquarters; your home street address;book of choice and optional personalized inscription. Thank you!

Save The Fish!

Ovidia—every other Tuesday

I have guests in my office—my guppies are in a temporary tank here because their larger (approx 120 L) fish tank by our bed sprang a leak in the middle of the night.
That’s a lot of water, but fortunately it’s a slow leak and I should be able to get all my fishy charges out in time…

The glass panes don’t seem damaged, so I’m guessing it’s the silicone sealant that’s given way. Not too bad, given it’s held up for the ten years we’ve lived here!

I could probably fix it myself, right? Like any reasonably intelligent adult could?
But where to start?
Enter B Plot: The Save The Cat Story Structure.

I’ve been hearing about the Save The Cat Story Structure/ System/ Beats for some time now.
I’m not very comfortable with the idea of following any kind of writing template, but after yet another (the third) fellow writer recommended it, I decided to find out what it’s all about.
Apparently the title comes from how you can make your protagonist appealing by having them do something selfless like saving a cat.

I was wrong when I'd assumed it was about defining priorities in writing (as in saving the cat ought always to be a number one priority).

The other thing I was wrong about was that it’s a guide to screenwriting rather than book writing!
But it's all about telling stories, isn't it?

Aside from that, it’s quite interesting.

And it's even proving helpful—especially in the questions it prompts.
For instance, ‘What does your Protagonist Want?’ vs ‘What does your Protagonist Need?’

I realised I could apply this to my current leaky fishtank situation—
What do I want? A tank that doesn’t leak (very true, but doesn’t help)
What do I need? I need my fish to survive (okay this gave me an action plan)

Once I got that cleared up, the first step was to set up their temporary abode—

And transfer them safely into it.
Also, to find temporary accommodation for all their furnishings

And get everything moved to safety before draining and tackling the leaky tank.

How? Like the protagonist in a Save the Cat scenario, I’ll assess my tools—

Yes, I have a silicone gun, even if I don't have much experience with it.
There's a lot less risk to working on a leaky sink in the bathroom compared with a fishtank in the bedroom!

Though a closer look's just told me this silicone isn’t ‘aquarium safe’ so I might have to go shopping for that and a razer blade scraper/ holder, since I don’t trust myself not to slice off a fingertip and contaminate my tank…

Luckily Polyart (my main source of aquarium supplies) is open 24 hours.
And according to Save The Cat, I should access the protagnist's (my) flaws.

My Biggest and All encompassing Flaw: I know how all this works in theory:
Cut and scrape off the old silicone, wipe down with acetone, apply duct tape guidelines along the joins, allowing at least double the width of the glass, apply the aquarium safe silicone and spread it into the join with a finger, making sure to get it into the ‘valley’. Then leave to dry for 48 hours before testing for water proofing.

It’s the same thing with writing according to the Save The Cat Guideline isn’t it? Again I know how it works in theory:

Introduce my protagonist as someone with a want, a need and a flaw. Make their starting condition clear to your reader (as in scrape off all the old silicone so you know exactly where you are). Confront them with a crisis that they’ll be unable to solve in their present state (the tank that can’t hold water without leaking). And set them on the path to fixing it (duct tape, silicone seal, etc).

And at the happy ending of both processes, the flaw’s been fixed, the situation’s resolved and the tank holds water again!

At least I hope this story will have a happy ending. I won’t know till after all the silicone scraping is done and the new seals set, so not before Thursday, most likely.

And a final unexpected similarity: Silicone smells incredibly like Salt and Vinegar Potato Crisps… which is pretty much how my room smells when I’m in the last throes of a final draft!

Please send good thoughts for my Save The Fish project!

The Page 69 Test

 Annamaria On Monday

As usual it is still Sunday as I write this, and I have just finished a wonderful conversation with Verena Rose.  For those of you who don’t know her, she wears every hat in the crime writing community and is treasured in every category: author, reviewer, editor, publisher, blogger, book seller, podcaster. It was the seventh of those activities that brought us together this week, when she interview me for a future podcast.

She sent me her questions in advance, and they were interesting and fun to discuss, and different from the typical ones.  Number seven on her list was not even a question.  It said "The page 69 Test.

The test was invented by Marshall McLuhan, the Canadian philosopher most famous for coining the phase "The medium is the message."  He also had an interesting piece of advice for someone unsure whether to buy a book. He suggested that they read page 69 to see if they found it interesting.  During our conversation, I took the test for my latest--A Death on the Lord's Day.

Here is my page 69: 

     “So you ­ were the one who moved the corpse ­ after Mrs. Tolliver

and her ­ father had seen it. Where did you put it?”

      “When I took it away from ­ there, I put it in the bush, for the

hyenas. Matua was not a Christian.” He paused for a few breaths.

“But I was braver than that.” His voice was strong now, almost

prideful. “I was the one who put the body of Matua in front of the

farm of Bwana Tolliver.”

     This revelation jolted Kwai Libazo. He kept calm. “Matua Jomo

was not killed in the place where he was found lying, near the Tolliver

farm?” he made the words half statement, half question.

    “No.”

    Kwai Libazo asked the question he had heard the Baroness ask

when she dined with Mr. and Mrs. Tolliver. “Why would a person

want to drop a corpse in such a place?”

Joseph said nothing.

    “Answer me!” Kwai could not keep the urgency, the demand out

of his voice.

     “No,” Joseph said. His voice ­ every bit as determined. “I have

already told you too much. I have already told you—­ Mimi mimi

mwogaa.”

     Kwai suppressed an impulse to grab the man and shake him.

Why, he demanded of himself. Why would this man take the corpse

of a friend—­ his tribal ­ brother—­ and drop in front of the Tolliver

farm? It took only six beats of his heart for the answer to flash into

his head. It shocked him so that he spoke it out loud.

    “You wanted Bwana Tolliver to find the killer.”

    “I did,” Joseph said. He moved ­ toward the light, and the look in

his eyes said he was making the same demand of Kwai Libazo.

    “Then you know who the killer was.”

    A level stare was Joseph’s only answer.

    Frustrated, angered, Kwai stood and towered over the man still

seated on the floor. “I can tell the police that you are concealing

The first word on the next page is "'evidence.' "

So what do you think?  Would this bit encourage you or discourage you?  To be fair to McLuan, he said his readers should not make page 69 the only deciding  factor.  But to keep an open mind about the book in question.

And to you, my fellow authors:  What about you?  Do you care to share a page 69 of one of your books?